In these pages I suggested that a revised Kirkpatrick doctrine could help American policymakers find ways to deal more systematically with authoritarian states. Five commentators have since raised thoughtful objections to this thesis. I welcome these comments, as they advance my...

Svante E. Cornell is director of the American Foreign Policy Council’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and a co-founder of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm. He is the author of Azerbaijan Since Independence (2011) and, with S. Frederick Starr, of Long Game on the Silk Road: U.S. and EU Strategy for Central Asia and the Caucasus (2018).